Last week was a marathon of submissions with forty completed
in the week. I have had one request for additional pages. Everything else has
been either no or no news. This week I moved to the area of self- publishing
that I prefer to call entrepreneurial publishing. I want to start by thanking
the multitude of resources that have helped me navigate my way through the maze
of self publishing.
Let me start by sharing a shapshot of today’s publishing
world. Today's book market has three types of publishers. There is the
traditional publisher who may publish a few titles a year or 100’s of titles a
year. They are part of the world of agents, editors and all. They are part of
advances and Hollywood deals and fame and fortune. Submissions is about
knocking on their door and asking to be let in.
The other two branches are related but different. One is the
vanity press and the other is entrepreneurial publishing or self-publishing
service. Both of these sell to the author but in very different ways. The
vanity press is set up to appear as a regular publisher. Their sales reps are
called acquisition editors and they use lines like “not every book I see has
what it takes but yours sure seems to and with some of our help we can get this
on the shelves” and then begins a fee for service or a package deal. These
firms often promise marketing help and various other after publishing services
that many in the blogosphere claimed never appeared. They are clearly
identifiable by the way they play on your vanity.
The entrepreneurial publishers simply flat out sell
services. Their rates appear on their websites and they are open and up front
about them. After looking at several and asking around I decided to go with
Createspace a company related to Amazon. I didn’t decide it was the absolute
best , I decided I had learned all I could without actually plunging in and
starting to learn the ropes.
Now believe me if an agent or a publisher calls and says we
would like to invite you into the world of traditional publishers I am there
and they can send my advance check here. And the over two years I have spent
knocking on their doors has been good because time and again I realized my
story was not yet ready. I have worked hard to improve it. But what I like
about entrepreneurial publishing is that I get to control everything about my
book, from the look of the cover to the lay of the page. I like that.
Next blog: Details, costs and risks of the entrepreneurial
adventure.
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